Governor Brown clearly doesn't understand either the cost or logistical considerations involved in California alone trying to maintain an Earth surveillance system, and it would probably make sense to 'team' with ESA or JAXA to provide both additional funding and technical capability as well as international launch locations; JAXA in particular has a number of excellent sites for launching to a variety of orbital azimuths, as well the technical capabilities for space vehicle development and integration, as well as domestically produced launch vehicles.

Stranger

I'm sure you're right--or maybe you just made a bunch of wild assumptions about what Brown's intentions are. He literally just said "we'll launch our own damn satellite." All kinds of non-U.S. government entities put satellites in space all the time.

I don't remember where Brown said "we're going to just launch it from California", I don't remember where he said "we're going to make our own space agency and design one ourselves" or any of that. $100m is peanuts, literally peanuts, for a State the size of California. Considering that Republicans love public-private partnerships, and even under Democrats NASA has been pushing more towards that, I very seriously doubt if a State is willing to give $100m to some entity (maybe even some governmental one) to build out and launch a satellite that the Republicans are going to care. Especially if some private contractor gets to make money on the deal. Republicans would also be loathe to take such a big stand against state autonomy.

For frame of reference cities regularly pay for $400m sports venues, cities. California is a state of 39m people with a $2.5 trillion GDP.

I see no reason to assume Governor Brown is proposing all kinds of crazy nonsense like doing all of it alone, assuming he was serious at all, California would cut a check and it'd be done.